Tradeoffs
by ricebol
Summary: An early encounter between the Doctor, Sarah, and the Reapers leaves the Doctor forever changed – but everything in life is a tradeoff. AU but could almost fit into canon. Rated for imagery. Four, Nine, Ten.
1. Dark Mirror

**Summary:** An early encounter between the Doctor, Sarah, and the Reapers leaves the Doctor forever changed – but everything in life is a tradeoff. AU but could almost fit into canon. **Based off of tekiclutch's art at the LJ community 500yeardiary,** (FFN won't allow the link, it appears) and various comments that they resembled Reapers' wings. **Look at the art first, really**. Bookended before and after by an AU version of the events in Father's Day, epilogued by a missing scene from School Reunion. Yep, hittin all the cliches, that's me.  
**Characters:** Bit of Nine and Rose and co, a lot of Four and Sarah, and then a little Ten and grownup!Sarah. Not meant to be shippy, so please don't take it that way - when a friend hurts, you're there for them, and that's a kind of love all its own.  
**Spoilers:** Father's Day AU, School Reunion. Beyond spoilers, it really HELPS if you've seen Father's Day or at least know what Reapers are/do.  
**Rating:** Hm. Some pretty bloody imagery, might be a swear or two sprinkled in. PG-13?  
**Disclaimer:** None of these characters belong to me. Obviously.  
**Misc notes:** Longest fic I've ever written, and I'm not 100 satisfied with every single word – seems I only really stay completely on form when I'm doing short one-chapter one-shots – but I like the motion of it, and the continuity. Which are the same thing, after all, just in different dimensions.

**tradeoffs**

**chapter one: dark mirror**

"Everyone, behind me!"

There was fear in the order, underlying the determination. Fear was not something Rose would ever get used to hearing from him – wouldn't likely get the chance to, either, now that the black, deadly creature had materialized inside the church. Her fault, again. How many times had it been her fault, in the last ten hours? The Doctor stood between the huddled group and the Reaper, hands crossed over his chest and gripping at his upper arms, face tight with concentration and strain. "I'm the oldest thing in here!" he shouted, and it was ominous, and it was brilliant and dark and dangerous, but it was just words, and these creatures would never bend to words. The Reaper spread its wings with a scream and dove towards them.

And, as if through a mirror, another pair of the black, taloned wings whipped open barely inches in front of Rose's face, shiny with something that, in this instant, she was sure was blood. And they were attached to her brilliant and dark and dangerous friend, now hunched forward in obvious pain, head snapped high to hold eye contact with the beast hovering now just a few feet away from the group. Looming.

The universe held its breath.

Voice scraping and twitching out its frustration, the Reaper whirled away from them and shot instead for the front of the church, straight towards the TARDIS where it still struggled to rematerialize, gold light glistening around its lines and corners, holding so much promise. Easier prey. Hope was the simplest thing to kill.

"No!" shouted the Doctor, stumbling forwards after it, but before he'd even taken a proper step the Reaper had collided with its target, evaporating with it into nothing. No more hope. No more chances. The key dropped onto the carpeted step, and with it went the Doctor, strings cut, tumbling bonelessly to the floor in bloody heap of man and something not, slick darkness falling around him like a wreath.

The tension broke. Someone screamed. The guests scattered, terrified, to the corners of the church, away from this Thing they'd entrusted their safety to, that had turned out to be just like the Things outside, dangerous and strange. One of them tried to stop Rose, blinded by fear and confusion, from stumbling down to his side.

She put one hand on his shoulder and shook it gently - no response - then reached for his hand, sought out a pulse. It was faintly echoed, like she'd always expected, but thready and terribly weak. Skin was hot, almost human-normal, which was positively burning up for him. Someone stepped up beside her, dropped the TARDIS key into her nerveless and shaking hand. She turned it over in her fingers a few times. It was cold.

"That's it," she mumbled through her tears, looking up to see her father looking down at her, standing beside her and the Doctor's still form, unflinching. "Nothing left we can do, yeah? It's over."

"No. It's not."

Her father was clever, it was where Rose got it from, in the end. He'd worked it all out. She argued and shouted and bargained with fate and finally just handed him the vase, the horrible tacky vase, and Peter Tyler walked out of the door and into forever.

* * *

She held his hand, and let go, and walked away, as she should have the first time. She wasn't used to having to let go, and she held onto the Doctor's hand all the more tightly to make up for it, as they made for the TARDIS. He looked normal now - pale, eyes pinched with exhaustion, and his jacket was torn up the back and yes, rather bloody, but the strangeness had passed and he was her Doctor again, her gangly Northern fellow with the haunted blue eyes.

But that wasn't enough, not for Rose. Grief alone craves understanding, needs to be made whole. She waited until they were inside with the doors closed and then asked tentatively, the question clear in her voice for all that it was warring with the impulse to just go off and cry. "Doctor...?"

"D'you mind if I get changed first?" he snapped over his shoulder, grinning faintly and there was both annoyance and humor in his tone. Normality, or an attempt at it. "Before you bring in the Inquisition? Just survived the end of the world and all, think I've earned myself the right to a clean jumper." For all the mock-indignation, he was speaking more softly than usual, and he was actually waiting on her answer - she nodded, and he disappeared into the corridors. Reappeared a few minutes later, bloodied green jumper changed out for blue, a dull black blazer doing duty work in place of his treasured jacket - he'd work on mending it later. Things could be mended, after all.

And it was that day again, so long ago, because suddenly there was something between them far more alien than the fact that the ship was bigger on the inside. The question echoed: "Where do you wanna start?"

"Th-the wings," she stuttered, fingers gripping the guardrail, white-knuckled.

"Yeah?" he said mildly, indulgence where there'd normally be irritation at her lack of specifics. She'd had a long and hard day. They both had. He crossed his arms and leaned against the opposite guardrail.

"What are they?"

"Wings," he snarked lightly, and woggled his eyebrows.

Rose sighed in frustration, looked off at some indiscriminate spot on the wall, over there. Third roundel from the right. She looked back up, nerves clearly shot, and she was being stupid, asking stupid questions. Time to fix that. "Right. Where are they now?"

He grinned, genuine warmth. "Astute one, that is. Tucked into a folded dimension. More of 'em than you lot realize, you know. Those creatures exist outside of time and space, it's an easy trick to just fold that little bit of 'em away."

She took a breath and bit her lip and looked at him expectantly, waiting for the rest of the explanation, the 'why' that all of her whats and hows were dancing around; he just looked right back, gaze even. "Alright, look," she finally said, exasperated, raw from grief, patience pushed to its limit. "Is there somefin' obvious I'm missing here, where I'm supposed to already know why you've got... _stupid_ bloody Reaper wings in yer back pocket?"

He looked down then, suddenly unwilling to look at Rose directly, eyes clouding with some dark flicker of memory. Third roundel from the right. A measured silence, then... "I was travelling, with this friend. Little planet on the edge of nowhere. She made a mistake like you did today. Not for the same reasons, but for the same feelings. You're right there, and a bad thing's about to happen, easy enough to just reach out and stop it happening, yeah?"

"Yeah," Rose muttered quietly, understanding and afraid and sinking.

"You want the story?"

She nodded.

"You sure? It can wait if you want..."

"No," she said, clearing the last of the tears from her voice. "Tell me."


	2. Causality

**chapter two: causality**

It had all spiraled out of control so quickly.

Such a simple thing to want – for innocent people to live. Selfless, right? How could selfless go wrong? How could it go this wrong, in shades of black and darkness and fear, in a rush of everything ending but not all at once, no – slowly enough for the shaking finger of time to point and say 'your fault.'

All her fault.

"Sarah!" The shout was desperate and edged with fear, and fear was not something she would ever get used to hearing from him – wouldn't likely get the chance to, either, the black creature swooping down towards her as she ran. What could the Doctor fear if they hadn't already lost?

Those people were meant to die.

He was between her and the flying beast suddenly, holding his arms out as if he could somehow ward it off, could convince it to return to the Vortex, to abandon this place and its purpose. Turn back time. Unmake the mistake. Cheat the Reaper – that's what he'd called them, she was sure of it, or at least as sure as she ever was of anything he went on about.

Damaged time. She'd done this – it had been so easy. All she'd had to do was want this planet to live, and to give in to that want, for such a brief, terrible moment. He'd saved so many lives, so many times in so many places, but he did have a tendency to know what he was doing, as he'd pointed out earlier with a painfully resigned smile.

And the lever was right there, in the bank of computers against the far wall. They'd fought through the complex to get here, to at least get to the place where they _could_ right the mistake, sparing no thought or conversation on whether they actually would. Could either of them burn out millions of lives, to save the timeline? To save themselves? Was it worth it? Would the creatures move on from this place, to other planets that the paradox affected? How many would die if they _didn't_ make that choice? It was too long and treacherously deep of a conversation, meandering between conscience and practicality and back again, and that was why they'd avoided it. There was no time for consideration, only to make a choice, and live or die by that decision.

The planet was meant to die – it was their time. There had been no interference. It wasn't fair, but it wasn't wrong, either. It simply was.

The Reaper dove and cartwheeled through the air, and they ducked under the near-miss, Sarah shouting out in fear as the blackened claws just barely clipped her hair. The Doctor straightened up, standing between eternity and this small human girl, giving her a clear path to the console, seeming so much taller and more imposing in this moment. The next dive wouldn't miss, so: present a bigger target.

She realized, with a shock- he was buying her time. With his life.

The Reaper dove.

It all came down to causality. What was a lesson in causality worth? The life of a planet? The life of a friend? Sarah edged toward the console, horrified by the scene playing out in front of her in slow-motion - blur of wings, an animal screech, her personal little world a second away from ending in the cold violence of continuity. The lever was hot in her hands. The fates of five million people were in her hands, a fate already decided by time long before she had come along. Drop the sun shield, let the planet boil as it was supposed to have happened. And the people she'd saved were already dead, weren't they? Sterilized, picked clean, destroyed by time's avengers?

By the time she saw the second Reaper swoop down between them, it was too late to shout a warning. Those nightmare claws slammed into the Doctor from behind, digging bloody furrows down the back of his coat and driving him to the ground on his face, wings billowing around his prone form. Ready to devour.

He hadn't blamed her, bless his hearts. But this was her fault, and she knew it.

Sarah pulled the lever.


	3. There but for Grace

**chapter three: there but for grace**

The Doctor stirred back to wakefulness warily, not exactly wanting to see where he was or what it looked like. Who knew where you ended up, devoured by time? The Vortex, the Void? The Void made more sense, certainly.

The Void also looked suspiciously like the floor of the TARDIS console room.

He started, blinking sharply, and raised himself up on one elbow, peering around. Yes, all brushed bright metal and gentle mechanical humming. Bit of blood on the decking. How had he gotten back into… never mind that, the TARDIS's innards had run off on him when the Reapers showed up. What had happened out there?

"They vanished," came Sarah's voice from somewhere nearby, shaky and teetering on the edge of breaking. When he tried to turn towards her and sit up properly, gentle hands stopped him – far too easily. Why did he feel so weak? "Don't, you're not well."

He slumped back onto his elbow, thinking, always thinking. Argue the point? Normally, yes. But he'd heard the trembling worry in her voice, stretched thin and nearly breaking. And he could sense the fever now, feel where his hair was stuck to his forehead in sweat-damp curls. He was _not_ well. Why not? Never mind, focus on the important bits. "Wouldn't just disappear. They're more determined than that. They never leave a job half finished – A lot of people could take a lesson from that, you know."

Half finished ….

"They did though, they just… disappeared out of the air. Like they were never there. When I…" Her voice choked suddenly, and it wasn't just worry now. It was guilt, and the pain that sneaks up on you after the fact, hits you over the head with what you've done. She knows it now. He will too, soon enough – another life, another day. "When I dropped the sun shield. Oh god, those people-"

"Were already dead," the Doctor said, a terrible sadness in his voice, and an age-weary resignation that he rarely showed and she simply didn't have. She cried for them openly and without guile, felt guilt that wasn't hers, wept for the injustice of the universe. So young, and so human. Beautiful and sad and admirable and everything he loved and pitied about humankind all rolled together. What was he going to tell her, that those people were meant to die, and that she'd saved countless other lives? She knew that already. He knew that already. It still felt wrong, didn't it?

Whose weakness was that?

"I'm sorry you had to do that, Sarah." The sentiment was sincerity and that was all he had the strength for, pushing himself up to his knees, wincing sharply at the pull of his coat against his injuries.

Wait. Half finished. Unfinished?

They had vanished. All the damage they had done should have been gone, wiped away- people included. Why was he still injured? The Doctor looked at her with suddenly wide, clear eyes. "Hold on a moment. They vanished. Did-"

And that was as far as he got. Whatever question was coming found itself wrapped inside a howl of pain as he doubled over on himself, elbows and forearms hitting the deck hard, pale and feverish face pressed to the grating. Sarah was there as she always was, dear girl, hands fluttering over him, panicked, voice choked with too much loss, too much fear, too much in one day, and now this. He pushed her away with the last bit of strength he had, hoping in some faraway part of his mind that wasn't consumed by the pain that she would understand it was for her own safety.

Because he had no idea what was going on, and that could not possibly be good.

He felt as if the intensity of the fever had multiplied instantly, his coat and scarf hanging off of him in thick folds, the heat stifling and unbearable. Then the pain was back, and the scream trailed off into a rasping, distant, paralyzed groan as he felt something moving under his skin – moving, and trying to get out. There was a tearing sound – fabric, yes, but not _just_ fabric, a layer of the sound unlike fabric tearing in every possible way and horrible for it. The claws came first, finishing the job that the creature outside had started, ripping the wounds wider – then bone and membrane and slithering, unfolding, black-slick with blood and infinity and darkness.

Pain beyond feeling, beyond paralysis. Beyond time.

Sarah was barely breathing now, making tiny, terrified noises. She stared openmouthed at her friend, at the coat rapidly soaking through down the sides in a deep rust-red, at the taloned monstrosities that had almost taken him from her once – now taking him again? No. That wasn't fair. There had been enough unfairness today already.

Snapping out of her shock, Sarah shot one hand forward to grasp at his as he struggled to push himself up from the deck, to provide something, anything, a lifeline, damn his admonitions to stay clear. The other rose to his pinched and pale face, lifting pain-clouded eyes up to meet hers. Make a connection. Close the circuit.

It was enough.

It was enough, and in a flash of insight striking straight and true through the agony, he understood. Reapers don't injure; they consume. They don't leave jobs unfinished. The gouges they'd left in him were evidence of the rules being broken. Had Sarah pulled the lever a second earlier or later he'd have been in a binary state – either untouched, or consumed and then returned whole – instead, he was hovering in between. His existence was a paradox all its own now, and they were trying to pull themselves back into the world through him to finish the job - become him, and obliterate the paradox.

But he'd always been stronger than that – or, at least, hoped he was.

Dull eyes snapped sharp again, narrowed in concentration, turning inward. It was an invasion of self – an undermining of his basic existence and that wasn't something the Doctor was going to allow, not now, not ever, not as long as he lived. Ages seemed to pass in the breadth of a moment as he struggled to assert control, cutting off pathways, getting and staying one step ahead. Stop the change before it can go further. Stop the encroachment of chaos and cold, clinical destruction, wracking through him in waves, his hands shaking violently where they clutched at the deck.

The sounds stopped after a moment, the wrenching and tearing of fabric and flesh ceasing into silence. The growth stopped as quickly as it had begun, the bloody appendages hanging above him in the air, attached but not hooked up to anything useful, their development arrested and stilled.

The Doctor lifted his head again for one brief moment, locked eyes with his lifeline, his Sarah Jane – with a pained and empty smile, tried to convey something of 'it'll all be all right, now' - then slipped quietly, and mercifully, into unconsciousness.


	4. The Business of Life

**chapter four: the business of life**

Sarah had been panicked at first but on finding her friend's heartbeats steady and the fever beginning to cool, and her own energy starting to wane as the adrenaline spike of the last few hours dropped off, she finally relented to drop into a restless sleep - on the floor nearby. He'd laugh at that, she realized as she drifted off - she'd be so much more comfortable in her room, in a real bed. But there was no way she was going to leave him alone like this.

By the time she'd woken up, hours later, it was to the sound of the TARDIS's engines kicking in, the central column already in motion. There was still blood crusted to the decking - dried, now - but the Doctor was clean, standing over the console, making adjustments. New shirt, new coat, no sign of what had caused the damage - aside from those rust-colored stains where he'd been bent to the deck, and his faint pallor under disheveled curls. The Doctor looked over at her as she shuffled to her feet, and smiled - a thin, tired smile that only just barely reached his eyes, but genuine. "Feeling better?" he asked, damnably innocent.

Sometimes, she could just smack him.

"Am I feeling better?" Sarah asked, incredulous, coming round the console to get a better look at him. "What about you? You're the one that – or did I dream all of that?" It was stupid, false hope – the reddened floor told her that. But she clung to it in that instant, hoping...

And the Doctor could tell that was what she wanted to believe, but he'd never been one to spare the truth. "It was no dream," he conceded, a little tired, a little sad. "Pity about that, but as your people say about spilled milk and all."

She sighed, looking down again at her hands, rested on the edge of the console. Heard him flip a few more switches. They didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular; the TARDIS's engines lacked that urgent whine. Parking in the Vortex for a bit, maybe. "I don't understand though, Doctor. If it really happened, then what happened to... them?" Them. The wings. She couldn't even say the word, it was such an alien concept – and for someone who traveled with an alien in an alien timeship all day, that said a lot. "Did you cut them off or something?"

A harsh chuckle in response, before those tired old eyes lifted to meet hers. "No, I somehow think that wouldn't be a very good idea. Seem to have a blood supply, it would be rather like cutting your arm off – you would bleed to death before you could reach for a bandage. Besides," the Doctor continued, a real twinkle in his eye now, "I don't think I could reach back there all by myself."

"Alright, then, where are they?"

That maddening grin was back, as he reached to adjust one more setting on the console. A quick arch of eyebrows served as punctuation. "Hiding."

* * *

It had taken Sarah a while, from that point, to get the whole truth out of him - a few spare pieces of information that he'd been trying, with all that lightness, to protect her from.

They weren't gone, just wrapped into another dimension that she couldn't see. The wounds would heal but the wings would always be there, rooted just under the skin – until his next regeneration definitely, and very likely beyond that, given the time-transcendent nature of the creatures they came from. It was all very clinical, the way he explained it to her. You couldn't tell from his tone that he'd just had a transdimensional scavenger-killer claw its way inside of him and change him, forever.

The idea horrified Sarah, for days afterwards, for years afterwards. Decades later she would think back on what happened that day and the shudder would be irrepressible.

But for now, there was moving on to do, and a life to resume, for both of them.

* * *

It was two days later – they were still nowhere in particular, and while at first Sarah had assumed this was deliberate, the Doctor now seemed frustrated by this fact as well. The TARDIS was misbehaving, refusing to land anywhere just yet. Perhaps she just knew better than they did, in her infinite, all-seeing way.

Sarah was crying, again.

Not that he could blame her, now that the depths of what she'd been forced to do down in the control room on the planet's surface were finally making themselves known to her – reaching for her, pulling her in. Threatening to drown her.

The Doctor sat with Sarah, one hand lightly on her shoulder. There were no words this time to try to calm her. All the tut-tutting in the world couldn't make a dent in this. Through the tears he could hear bits of what she was saying, about it being unfair, about how many people had died, about the cruelty of it all. That she had killed them. Words like 'monster' and 'unforgivable'.

"Sarah," he said finally, drawing her attention away from where her hands clutched at each other far too tightly. "Listen to me. It doesn't matter who pulled the lever. Do you understand? It doesn't matter because you couldn't have saved them. Time would not have allowed it."

"But why not?" she sobbed brokenly. She was not uncomprehending; she was not stupid. But she _was_ caught up in her emotions and she didn't want to see it.

"Because that isn't how it works," he said quietly, an unusual soft edge to his voice. A softness that was just for her, in this moment, because she needed it. "It isn't fair, but nothing is, Sarah. Life certainly isn't. Things happen in their sequence. Messy business, but you can't save everyone and you can't fix everything. Some things are just meant to happen." A pause, and somewhere behind his eyes, she could swear he aged right in front of her. "Everything has its time, Sarah. And everything ends."


	5. Mending

**chapter five: mending**

"Heard that before, or somefin' close to it," Rose mused, capping the antiseptic bottle.

The Doctor sat silently on the one stool the TARDIS's makeshift infirmary had to offer, wincing slightly at the medicine's burn down his back. It hadn't taken long into the story before Rose had noticed how stiffly he was holding himself against that guardrail and insisted that the telling move here. She had no real first aid skills and certainly couldn't put in stitches, but she could at least clean out the bloody tears and tape some gauze over them, make sure they healed straight.

"Yeah well, it's sort of become an overriding theme in recent years, hasn't it? Wonder why."

She didn't respond to that one, no way in hell. Too recent and raw for her – the ending only hours old – and too huge and deep and crippling for him. Best to just not even touch it. Change the subject. "So, what I don't get is, when you did that back there, why'd it just... fly away without attacking?"

"Their existence is already so fragile," he replied, squirming slightly as the gauze went on – for someone who went around calling himself the Doctor, he was annoyingly resistant to being on the receiving end of medical attention. "Contingent on so many conditions, you know, space, time, the existence of a strong enough paradox, the direction of the wind in Honduras. And they're all part of the same thing, really, the same force. Attacking a bit of themselves, regardless of where it is, could be enough to drive them out of existing, at least in that place and time."

Silence, for a moment, aside from the pulling noises of tape coming off the roll. Then, calmly, hiding the anger underneath: "You unbelievable bastard. You wanted it to attack you, didn't you?"

A careful shrug, trying to play it off. "Might have done. Can't remember exactly. That or just figuring they'd stay away from the rest of you that way. Either way it bought you all some time to get it fixed so... fair trade, I figure." He paused there, as if he'd been about to say something else, then let it die on his tongue. Reached for his jumper, as she put the gear back in the cabinet. Anything to restore normalcy.

"It wasn't the only trade today," Rose said, tremblingly close to tears.

"I know," he said, shrugging into his jacket now, turning to face her.

It was only a moment before she broke, and fell into his arms, crying out her anger and pain and bitterness over what a terribly unfair place this brilliant universe could be, sometimes.


	6. Epilogue: Full Circle

**epilogue: full circle**

Sarah Jane Smith, older and supposedly wiser, walked slowly and woodenly away from the school, her oldest friend beside her. His arm was slung supportively across her shoulders, but his eyes were distant. Rose and Mickey had hung back, stayed behind, to give them space to mourn their lost companion. For Sarah's part, the hardest thing – the bit keeping her silent – was fathoming how to express the wave of grief she was feeling without it sounding hopelessly sentimental and stupid.

Daft metal dog. Right?

This was the first day like this in a long time, for her – the excitement, the thrill, the winning, and the cost of it all. The loss. She forgot sometimes that this was something that went along with the adventure and splendor – the pain, and the hard choices, and the plans that went wrong, and the people you couldn't save. Because you could never save them all.

Glancing up at the Doctor, at the hard and distant set of his expression, the pain edging those unfamiliar and delicate dark eyes, it was clear that this was just the latest in a long line of such days for him. He didn't get a break from them, from the days of pain and sacrifice and cutting his losses, always just cutting, never eliminating – the days that break your heart.

So much time between them, now.

So many wounds and barely-healing scars and she could see them when he turned to meet her eyes, sensing her watching him. Cuts and dents in the armor, catching the light, reflecting and refracting his brilliance and pain and loneliness and love for life, more obvious and broken than ever. And he was older for them all, and she knew that some of them, she put there.

Weren't dark eyes supposed to be harder to read than light ones? So why was she seeing things in them now that she never did before?

"Sistina Seven," she offered into the silence, heavy with some unfathomable sentiment.

The Doctor seemed thrown for a moment by the non sequitur, and his eyes focussed off in middle distance, mouth hanging open slightly as he tried to place the reference – then, memory offering itself up, looked back to Sarah's face, hesitant. "What about it?"

Sarah was looking ahead now, trying to keep the conversation casual, because that was the only way she could handle it. One step in front of the other. Couldn't meet those new eyes when she asked, with their depths laid open and bare for her to see. "Was it... was it as permanent as you said it would be?"

Silence for a moment, only the sharp tap of her shoes hitting the pavement and the softer tread of his. The hand on her shoulder tightened incrementally. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."

"I never apologized properly," she said, voice rushed and starting to break, head ducking to her chest.

"No need." There was a smile in his voice, and it was almost genuine. "It was a mistake, everyone makes mistakes. Even me – well. Less than most. But it's been known to happen."

Sure has, and he knows it, more now than he ever did before.

Sarah bit her lip, dredging up memories she had hoped would stay buried – the blood on the decking, the color not quite the same as hers - the way the console room had echoed. But that was part of really growing up, wasn't it? Facing the unpleasant bits to do what's right. And this, this apology, is what's right. "You suffered for my mistake. And it was permanent. And I can't undo that, but I just wanted to say how sorry I am, that it happened."

Nothing in response, for a long moment. Sarah dared to glance up at the Doctor, and found him staring off, a different sort of pain playing across his face. Just when did he become this open? "Sarah, I'm going to tell you something here, that I don't often talk about. Okay?" All seriousness now, the playful self-deprecation of a moment ago gone in a heartbeat.

She nodded assent, mutely wondering where this was going, the conversation seemingly having veered off course all of a sudden. She was in no way prepared for what he said next.

"Gallifrey's gone. Lost in a war."

Sarah just stared for a moment, then remembered – in the dark, under the school. The glow of blue light, shock, joy, anger, and shock again. "You said... you said that everyone died."

A deep breath. "I did. But more than just died, Sarah. Removed from time and space like they never existed. Never were, never would be. Just a myth, now, hanging about like ghosts in the back of the universe's subconscious mind. But not real."

Nothing but shocked silence answered him, and he tightened his grip on her shoulder again, a gesture so like clinging that she could scarcely believe it was coming from him – from the Doctor, her Doctor, the aloof and independent wanderer who claimed to not need a home in the first place. "Do you know why I survived?"

"Astute planning?" she offered, and it was the sort of thing that might normally have been a joke, but in this context, could never be.

The Doctor turned his head fractionally away from her, looking off at something in the distance, something not quite there. "Nah, you know me. Dumb luck's more my style." A beat of silence. "But, no. Nearest I can figure – and this is just a theory, I'll probably never know for sure. But what went on back there on Sistina – it unhooked me from time, sort of. Offset me just this slight little bit – not enough for you lot to notice, even I barely notice it anymore, and that's saying something. But enough that when the continuity wave hit, I was just-" And he stepped them both to the side, around a lamppost in their path. "- a half step to the left."

Sarah sharpened her gaze on him, realization unfolding.

"Slipped right by me," he continued, scrunching his face in thought. "Barely ruffled my – well, ruffles. Had a thing for ruffles that time round, odd thing really. Anyway." He stopped walking and turned towards her, hands squaring on both her shoulders, needing to say this face to face. Needing her to understand. "Your 'mistake' caused that, Sarah. All the time that's passed, all the things I've seen and done and the places I've been since I left you on Earth," And her eyes flickered painfully at that, but he pressed on, leaning forward slightly to lock her gaze and hold it. "All these years later, Sarah Jane Smith, and you are _still_ saving my life."

Sarah took a deep breath, let it out, smile warm and real when it came, unflinching under the intensity of his gaze. "I always did try."

The smile was returned, and for just a moment, the brightness of life in his eyes crowded out the pain. "Thank you."

* * *

_(c) ricebol 2006 _


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